The present disclosure relates generally to a stylus technology, and more particularly, to a system and method for optically-based active stylus input recognition.
Touch sensitive devices can generally allow a user to perform various functions by touching or hovering over a touch sensor panel using one or more fingers, a stylus or other object at a location often dictated by a user interface (UI) including virtual buttons, keys, bars, displays, and other elements, being displayed by a display device. In general, touch screens can recognize a touch event and the position of the touch event on the touch sensor panel or a hover event and the position of the hover event on the touch sensor panel, and the computing system can then interpret the touch or hover event in accordance with the display appearing at the time of the event, and thereafter can perform one or more operations based on the event.
Devices such as computing devices, mobile devices, kiosks, etc. often employ a stylus with which a user can interact with the devices by using the stylus input on a touch screen display. The stylus has demonstrated to be an effective input device and important differentiator in computing and mobile devices. The stylus can allow a user to perform various functions by touching the touchscreen or by hovering the stylus over it. In general, devices with touch screens can recognize the position of the touches with the stylus, and can then interpret the touches, either individually or as a single gesture in accordance with the display appearing at the time of the touch event, and thereafter can perform one or more actions based on the touch event. However, many stylus implementations have high power consumption, are expensive, and are not easy to scale to large areas. A conventional stylus is often simply a conductive rod with a finger-sized rounded tip large enough to disrupt the electric field lines between the drive and sense electrodes of a capacitive touch sensor panel.
Accordingly, a need exists for low-power and low-cost active stylus based input recognition.